Mike Allen

April 08, 2011

[Guest post by James Downie]
Perhaps the strangest part of the furor around the Ryan budget proposal has been his ability to snow the media into treating him as a serious wonk, a thinker of “brave” thoughts. Then again, as Jon has written many times, media outlets seem to have fallen head over heels for Ryan’s “just a plain accountant” persona.

March 14, 2011

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen argue that the Tea Party redefined the purpose of the GOP as opposition to spending:
The Republican Party is undergoing a messy but unmistakable 20-month transformation from fanatically anti-Obama to fanatically anti-spending, providing top party officials a new and intriguing playbook for recapturing the White House in 2012.
To understand the current evolution, flash back to late spring of 2009. The GOP was disoriented and adrift, its leadership void filled by the bombastic voices of Palin, Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

February 17, 2011

Paul Ryan isn't letting go of his Obama-ignored-the-deficit-commission talking point. Here's his interview with Politico's Mike Allen.
Ryan: President Obama, through an executive order, created his own commission to solve this plan.
Q: You were on it.
Ryan: I was on the commission. And you know what he did? He didn't accept -- he didn't take one of the big recommendations of the commission, he basically disavowed the commission.

December 29, 2010

Politico reported the other day that Wall Street is upset at the Obama administration. It seems to me as if the hurt feelings of this tiny (albeit very rich) segment of society has received enormous attention in the media.

November 05, 2010

Republicans support tax cuts that affect very high incomes. Democrats don't. They support tax cuts only up to income levels that include the middle class and the poor.*
Ah, but how do you define "middle class"? For a while now, Obama and the Democrats have drawn the line at household incomes of $250,000 a year. That's a rather high definition, since median household income is around $50,000 a year. But now some Democrats aren't even comfortable with that threshold.

October 14, 2010

Periodic reports that Haley Barbour may run for president have had me wondering for a while if Republicans were completely loco (and not just Republican-loco, but loco enough to nominate a candidate who embodies the deepest cultural stereotypes of their party.)
Apparently, they're not all loco, reports Mike Allen:
A handful of well-known Republicans plans to go to Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour after Nov. 2 and urge him, for the good of his party, to run for chairman of the Republican National Committee rather than the party’s nomination for president, as he currently plans.

September 14, 2010

I’m not sure exactly what Henry Farrell is getting at in his partial dissent to Ezra Klein and John Sides, but I think I’m with them on this one. Farrell:
But to say that Politico, cable news etc are (a) trivial and (b) unimportant to the vast majority of voters is not to say that they may not still be important to politicians. This is because the belief in their importance is a collective one rather than an individual one.

July 13, 2010

[Guest post by Noam Scheiber:]
Mike Allen turns up one more example of Sen. Scott Brown's outsize influence today:
Brown (R-Mass.) holds the key to yet another bill -- the DISCLOSE act, in response to the Citizens United ruling. Brown is increasingly seen as the make-or-break vote: The path to 60 goes through him.

July 09, 2010

[Guest post by Noam Scheiber:]
Mike Allen reports in his "White House Mindmeld" today that Obama is settling into a "choice election" strategy for November (i.e., trying to make it as much about the other guys as you) rather than a "referendum election" strategy (i.e., making it solely about you):
The President used his remarks in Missouri to frame the November elections as a choice between the economic policies that led us into this mess and the policies that are leading us out – a theme you’ll hear a lot of in the coming four months.
Setting aside the fact that this is almost always the stra